Five things Private Darren Becker finds frustrating
by Shenandoah Risu
Summary: Food was a constant source of frustration for Private Darren Becker. With Darren Becker and the Destiny Crew.


**Title: Five things that Pvt. Darren Becker finds frustrating  
Author: Shenandoah Risu  
Rating:** G  
**Content Flags:** none  
**Spoilers:** none  
**Characters:** Pvt. Darren Becker  
**Word Count:** 727  
**Summary: **_Food was a constant source of frustration for Pvt. Darren Becker._  
**Author's Notes:** Written for prompt set # 134 at the LJ Comm sg1_five_things. In honor of Jeffrey Bowyer-Chapman whose birthday was October 21, with thanks for bringing us another one of those fascinating minor characters on SGU that I'm sure we would have seen more of in future seasons.  
**Disclaimer:** I don't own SGU. I wouldn't know what to do with it. Now, Young... Young I'd know what to do with. ;-)  
Thanks for reading! Feedback = love.

**oOo**

**Five Things Pvt. Darren Becker finds frustrating**

"Recipes. For the love of god, Becker – recipes."

It was Colonel Young's first order for him after they had ended up on the Destiny. Darren was well aware that the Colonel had spoken in jest – there's only so many things you can do when the only things in your pantry are protein powder and water.

He meant to protest, but then he thought about it some more. His two ingredients were all he had. But he could still do stuff with them.

_Pancakes_.

Yep, some eggs would have been great, but there wasn't a heck of a lot more in Bisquick, either. It took many failures for him to find the exact proportion of powder and water so that the correct viscosity was achieved to hold the stuff together when he fried it on a hot plate.

Personally he thought they tasted really good, but the apathy with which his crew wolfed them down was pretty frustrating.

_Mousse_.

It took some doing to get the Ancient beater in the Destiny galley working again, but finally Brody had managed to get it fixed. The thing took off like a rocket, too, and the resulting mousse was a chef's dream: light and airy and fluffy, melt-in-your-mouth smooth with a lip-smacking texture that made him wring his hands in anticipation of the crew's reaction.

It was kind of like feeding cattle: it got eaten without much notice being paid. It was just food to them.

_Chips_.

Those were incredibly hard to do – making the batter thin enough so he could get it into the correct thickness for chips, and gauging the temperature just right so they wouldn't burn. But they turned out beautifully – GB&D (translated from chefspeak: golden brown and delicious).

He watched in quiet dismay as hands reached into the big bowls he had set out; conversation was punctuated by the crackling sounds of the chips being masticated. The bowls were returned empty with the usual polite smiles.

_Shakes_.

Using the Ancient beater again he experimented for days with proportion and processing time, temperature and pouring techniques, but finally he managed to get it just right. He lovingly decorated each perfectly poured cup with a flower carved from styrofoam peanuts from a packing crate.

His minions picked out the flowers, licked them off, downed the shake, burped pleasantly and handed everything back to him while barely stopping the conversation they were in at the moment.

Darren stared at the 88 little styrofoam flowers. Then he washed them carefully and used them to decorate the galley cabinets. Later on people noticed them while on KP duty, but nobody ever recalled where they were from.

_Waffles_.

He'd found spare parts for frying plates in a storage room and attached two of the decorative wall panels found in almost every room on the Destiny. Using his pancake dough with more water added he actually succeeded in making waffles. He ate the first one with tears in his eyes, because even though they didn't taste like waffles they had the perfect texture, and they smelled fantastic.

People inhaled them quite literally, poking their fingers into the textured surface, pulling them apart in strips. The din in the mess seemed to be rather lighthearted that day but again the plates were returned to him at the end with nary a glance.

He sat down on a stool, hating his life.

After a while of wallowing in self-pity he cleaned up and trudged back to his quarters.

And he stopped short at seeing his hatch covered with post-it notes that someone must have found in a packing crate. Each one contained a note of thanks from a crew member – a crudely drawn bouquet of flowers and puppies with big eyes and drooling tongues, lots of stars and medals inscribed with the number one, short poems and awkward expressions of gratitude.

He read every single one of them and then he tucked them into an often-used Ziploc bag.

Every so often he would find another one – tacked to the dial on the stove or the handle of the cold storage unit, on top of the Purple Sweet Potato bin or the side of a jar of herbs, as their food growing skills increased.

Food was a constant source of frustration for Pvt. Darren Becker.

His shipmates, however, were not.

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_**Thanks for reading! A comment or feedback would be much appreciated.**_

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